SF Encyclopedia Home Page
Sunday 15 February 2026
Welcome to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Fourth Edition. Some sample entries appear below. Click here for the Introduction; here for what we mean by Science Fiction; here for the masthead; here for some Statistics; here for the Acknowledgments; here for the FAQ; here for advice on citations. Find entries via the search box above (more details here) or browse the menu categories in the grey bar at the top of this page.
Site updated on 9 February 2026
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Carver, Jeffrey A
(1949-2026) US author who began publishing sf with "... Of No Return" in Fiction Magazine for 1974. His first novel, Seas of Ernathe (1976), which serves as an introduction to the loose Star Rigger sequence of Space Operas, showed early signs of a love of plot and thematic complexity which would take him some time, and several novels, to control. The continuation, Star Rigger's Way (1978), for instance, combines quest ...
Quarber Merkur
Austrian Fanzine; edited by Franz Rottensteiner since its inception in 1963. In the argot of fans, Quarber Merkur is a "sercon" (serious and constructive) fanzine, one of the longest-running and most impressive of its type. It publishes critical, bibliographical, sociopolitical and historical studies of sf, Utopias, weird fiction and Fantasy. Averaging 90 large ...
Tiedemann, Mark W
(1954- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "The Spacer Walks" in Space and Time for December 1983 as M William Tiedemann; The Gravity Box and Other Spaces (coll 2014) is a good selection of his shorter work, which ranges from Hard SF to Steampunk and fantasy. His contributions to the Isaac Asimov's Robot Mysteries ...
New Dimensions
Original-Anthology series (1971-1981) edited by Robert Silverberg. New Dimensions I (anth 1971) appeared when original anthology series were proliferating in the USA, with such titles as Infinity, QUARK/ and Universe. It was one of the longest surviving titles from this period, although it changed publishers several ...
Appleton, Victor
A House Name of the US Stratemeyer Syndicate, used mainly on the Don Sturdy series, and on the four Tom Swift series, which together constitute a central example of the importance and persistence of the Edisonade in US sf; for a detailed Tom Swift Checklist, see Tom Swift. Howard R Garis wrote the first ...
Langford, David
(1953- ) UK author, critic, editor, publisher and sf fan, in the latter capacity recipient of 21 Hugo awards for fan writing – some of the best of his several hundred pieces are assembled as Let's Hear It for the Deaf Man (coll 1992 chap US; much exp vt The Silence of the Langford 1996; exp 2015 ebook) as Dave Langford, edited by Ben Yalow – plus five Best Fanzine Hugos ...